


As Flies to Wanton Boys

by atouchofyou



Category: Final Fantasy XII
Genre: Angst, Gen, Loyalty, Reflection, Regret
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-30
Updated: 2015-03-30
Packaged: 2018-03-20 08:34:09
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3643683
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/atouchofyou/pseuds/atouchofyou
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Do you think the gods have spurned us all?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	As Flies to Wanton Boys

**Author's Note:**

> As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods  
> They kill us for their sport.   
>  Shakespeare, King Lear Act Four, Scene 1

He tried to wander the streets, but found he couldn’t breathe. People pressed in from every side and he could not help but flinch every time skin brushed against him. After cutting their escape through friends turned traitor, all the life was hard to bear. He could not float through the crowds–only thrash about. Gasping for air, he went back to the inn. His princess sat where he had left her: Staring at the table with glassy, unfocused eyes. She said nothing, and he could tell she still had not cried. Neither had he. When they finally broke, they would fill the seas. 

He sat opposite, considering a girl too quickly a woman. Homeless, widowed, orphaned at seventeen; Two years and not one tear. Instead, armor and a sword in her hand–the last heir to a conquered country. He knows the day she traded mourning for this fearful sense of purpose. He bore her slain husband across deserts to her. The man weighed down his arms and his beast, but his death proved the heavier burden to bear. Her face composed, she thanked him for returning. Thanked him, when he brought only sorrow: news of her husband, her father, his own unwilling treachery. He did his duty to protect her from the world for seventeen years. But try as he might, he could not save her from the gods who claimed her mother, brothers, husband and father; the gods who, in the guise of a foreign empire, took even her home, crown and country. He could not keep war from her, and now death is as much a part of life as breathing. 

He has heard young boys cannot distinguish right from wrong; He supposes this is true. He pulled wings and legs from insects to see what would happen, watched them crawl onward to escape their torture, pulling strength from a place he did not, and still does not, understand. It fascinated him, even when he began to know right and wrong, and the ways men profited from each. 

He was pulled from memory when she named him. He answered the question in her eyes with one of his own. 

“Do you ever think the gods have spurned us all?” She toyed with the twin bands on her ring fingers. One for her, one for a body beneath a palace which no longer stands. 

“You cannot spurn what you never loved to begin with.”


End file.
